MAMEWAH future ideas

[lildivaaa]

Question for Minwah:

I know that MAMEWAH can play an MP3 while the front-end is running, but what about this.....

Could MAMEWAH display an intro video before the frontend starts up? Videos like the ones found on http://www.cinemarcade.com/  ?

For that matter, instead of screenshots showing on the front-end while selecting games, could MAMEWAH show small video clips of the actual games running? Something like what the frontend 3D-Arcade does ( http://3darcade.mameworld.net )??

Just some random thoughts,
Craig - Atlanta, Ga. USA

[Syntax]

I like the idea if you could get it to support mpg/avi and flash for the intros that be really neat.

[Shieldwolf]

here here

[Minwah]

I personally have never been a fan of intro movies (I'd rather start playing that stand watching!)...but it could be quite cool I suppose.

I had a bit of trouble with movie-playing when I added the movie-show screensaver (it wouldn't even install on Win98), so I removed it as being 'more trouble than its worth'.  That said, I do want to add it back in at some point - I just don't know how to do it atm

[JackTucky]

I'd like to not have to select an emulator.  I'd like all of my games that I like to play to be on one list.

A favorites list, with some mame, some daphne, some atari, etc.

Art

[kujina]

While having a movie intro would be a "nice" feature, myself like Minwah would want to get down to playing. Also don

[BuZz880]

Question for Minwah:

I know that MAMEWAH can play an MP3 while the front-end is running, but what about this.....

Could MAMEWAH display an intro video before the frontend starts up? Videos like the ones found on http://www.cinemarcade.com/  ?

For that matter, instead of screenshots showing on the front-end while selecting games, could MAMEWAH show small video clips of the actual games running? Something like what the frontend 3D-Arcade does ( http://3darcade.mameworld.net )??

Just some random thoughts,
Craig - Atlanta, Ga. USA

Hmmm, not to sound like a broken record, but why not just launch MAMEWAH via a BAT file which could them call your movie using some freeware player?

[DaveMMR]

If my idea is actually a feature in MameWah (though I'm almost positive it's not) I apologize in advace as I haven't had the time to play around with the latest version.   But since the oppurtunity arose now, I figured I'd bring this up...

I'd like to see an option that allows you to have a BMP or JPEG display after selecting a game that would remain on the screen til a button was pressed.  Something like this would be useful for showing a quick diagram on what buttons/panel/etc. are needed and which performs what action.   Something like you see in game demo discs (or like Neo-Geo games, without the animation of course).

[SpamMe]

If my idea is actually a feature in MameWah (though I'm almost positive it's not) I apologize in advace as I haven't had the time to play around with the latest version.   But since the oppurtunity arose now, I figured I'd bring this up...

I'd like to see an option that allows you to have a BMP or JPEG display after selecting a game that would remain on the screen til a button was pressed.  Something like this would be useful for showing a quick diagram on what buttons/panel/etc. are needed and which performs what action.   Something like you see in game demo discs (or like Neo-Geo games, without the animation of course).

Ya know, that's a pretty dern good idea imo.

[Minwah]

These are good ideas which I have noted, although I must say I do not intend adding them until after v1.0 (a long way off).  

In fact, I do not intend adding any new features atm, I just want to get everything running bug-free

[lildivaaa]

These are good ideas which I have noted, although I must say I do not intend adding them until after v1.0 (a long way off).  

In fact, I do not intend adding any new features atm, I just want to get everything running bug-free

Very understandable, Minwah. I must say, your front-end is by far the best I've ran across in a long time. I know there are probably a few more tweaks your wanting to implement before v1.0 to stabilize things a bit. But, please...keep our ideas jotted down somewhere. We all appreciate the great work your doing.  

[Isometric Bacon]

Question for Minwah:

I know that MAMEWAH can play an MP3 while the front-end is running, but what about this.....

Could MAMEWAH display an intro video before the frontend starts up? Videos like the ones found on http://www.cinemarcade.com/  ?

Wow, those are some cool videos!

What i'd suggest you do, is to somehow obtain a screen saver that doubles as MPEG viewer, (there's gotta be one out there somewhere) which has an ability to repeat video files over again and again, Now, if you set the full 5 minute arcade video to the screensaver, and set mamewah to play the SCR file, you should have a fully functioning screensaver which will load this film and play it indefinately whilst your not using the machine. This way it won't interfere with gameplay (if you just want to start up the machine and turn it on) and will look fancy if the cabinet is simply left alone.

[Minwah]

What i'd suggest you do, is to somehow obtain a screen saver that doubles as MPEG viewer, (there's gotta be one out there somewhere) which has an ability to repeat video files over again and again, Now, if you set the full 5 minute arcade video to the screensaver, and set mamewah to play the SCR file, you should have a fully functioning screensaver which will load this film and play it indefinately whilst your not using the machine. This way it won't interfere with gameplay (if you just want to start up the machine and turn it on) and will look fancy if the cabinet is simply left alone.

Kujina kindly gave some links to such programs above...

The Active Media Player saver works very well (I think you have to pay after a while tho).  The only thing I can fault it for is that when playing random movies, it does not seem to remove each movie from the playlist after it has played - so you may see the same movie twice in quick succesion.  Aside from that it is exactly how my old Movie Show saver worked...

[arcadecab]

I know I asked this before, but with the Active Media Player saver, has anyone else had difficulty gettting it to work?  I downloaded the program directly off the weblink given and when I try to run the program, I get an illegal operation has occured and nothing happens.  Is there any particular version of Mediaplayer, Windows or otherwise that is needed?  I am running Win 98SE--has anyone tried the program with Win 98 to see if it should indeed work with it.  It is really frustrating because I would love to use somekind of program like this to create a movie screensaver for MAMEwah.  
With the second link, there are numerous links given.  Any suggestions on which one could be used to create the movie screensaver effect that I am looking for?
Thanks for any help--just really wish I could get this movie screensaver feature to work somehow.

[kujina]

Hello arcadecab

I like many others use xp and active media player works fine.
I cant comment on any of those other screen savers as I have had no reason to try them. If your machine is good enough I would recomend you going to xp, I abandoned win9x ages ago. The minimum is spec is 233mhz 64mb and 1.5 gigs of hard drive space, but those specs are bare minimum.
As long as you have 500mhz+ processor and 256mb+ of ram you dont have many reasons to stay with win98.
But for now one of these is bound to work http://freethemes.tele.net/editors/editscreen.htm

[papaschtroumpf]

As long as you have 500mhz+ processor and 256mb+ of ram you dont have many reasons to stay with win98.

My reason is the cost of another XP license when I have several unused Win98 licenses.

But for now one of these is bound to work http://freethemes.tele.net/editors/editscreen.htm

This brings up a whole list, which one are you actually referring to?

[lildivaaa]

Minwah,

Have you ever used animated gifs as screenshots in MAMEWAH? I ask this because the skin I use in MAMEWAH, uses an arcade cabinet picture and I put the screenshots of the selected games in where the monitor should be. I thought is would be fun to have an actual "moving" picture in the screenshot, versus a static shot. Also, back to one of my original questions....along the lines of the animated gifs....could avi's, wmv's, mpeg's or the like, be used in later versions of MAMEWAH as screenshots instead of jpeg, bmp or png?

I just thought it would add a nice touch,
Craig

[daveatwinterpegca]

I as well as a few others I know would love to see native joystick support included in MameWAH. It is by far the best front end I've seen for customization and ease of use. However the lack of joystick support using the joystick/gamepad port on my computer limits me from using it in my cabinet as I am using hacked Sidewinder controls. I've used Joy2Key and the results were not as favorable as I would have thought.

If this was to be added I would jump over from AdvanceMenu in a new york second.

-dave

[papaschtroumpf]

Have you tried http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA016823/joytokey/english.html ?

[kujina]

As long as you have 500mhz+ processor and 256mb+ of ram you dont have many reasons to stay with win98.

My reason is the cost of another XP license when I have several unused Win98 licenses.

But for now one of these is bound to work http://freethemes.tele.net/editors/editscreen.htm

This brings up a whole list, which one are you actually referring to?

I'm a little confused, are you also the user arcadecab?

[papaschtroumpf]

nope sorry, not arcadeCab, I understand the confusion though.

My comment on XP was just a general comment.

I'm still interested in knowing what screen saver you recommend in that post.

[Minwah]

Minwah,

Have you ever used animated gifs as screenshots in MAMEWAH? I ask this because the skin I use in MAMEWAH, uses an arcade cabinet picture and I put the screenshots of the selected games in where the monitor should be. I thought is would be fun to have an actual "moving" picture in the screenshot, versus a static shot. Also, back to one of my original questions....along the lines of the animated gifs....could avi's, wmv's, mpeg's or the like, be used in later versions of MAMEWAH as screenshots instead of jpeg, bmp or png?

I just thought it would add a nice touch,
Craig

Again, I personally would not want to use video (or even animated gifs) instead of images.  I can't imagine being bothered to either download or create movies for all the games I have...

That said, it would look nice  Its on the list for v2...

[Minwah]

I as well as a few others I know would love to see native joystick support included in MameWAH. It is by far the best front end I've seen for customization and ease of use. However the lack of joystick support using the joystick/gamepad port on my computer limits me from using it in my cabinet as I am using hacked Sidewinder controls. I've used Joy2Key and the results were not as favorable as I would have thought.

If this was to be added I would jump over from AdvanceMenu in a new york second.

I would like to add this feature, but I don't know how - maybe by v2 I will know how  

[lildivaaa]

Again, I personally would not want to use video (or even animated gifs) instead of images.  I can't imagine being bothered to either download or create movies for all the games I have...

That said, it would look nice  Its on the list for v2...

Actually, I already have an entire collection of very small avi's of "attraction modes" for alot of the games. They could be offered as a single download as a zip file. Also, I can convert them to animated gifs easily, which would reduce the file size even more. Again, those gifs could all be in one zip file.

You know, I never bothered to look. Does MAMEWAH support gifs as screenshots? If so, I may test an animated gif and see if it will play natively as a screenshot.

Thoughts?
Craig

[arcadecab]

lildivaaa,

With this quote: "Actually, I already have an entire collection of very small avi's of "attraction modes" for alot of the games. They could be offered as a single download as a zip file. Also, I can convert them to animated gifs easily, which would reduce the file size even more. Again, those gifs could all be in one zip file."

I would really like to have those avi's or gifs "attraction mode" action screens.  Is it possible to make them available for download somewhere as one zipfile?It would be great to be able to use them in the future in MAMEwah instead of screenshots.  I also have the cabinet skin that you mentioned and the animated screens would look awesome compared to the still shots that I currently use.  Let's hope Minwah can add this to MAMEwah in the real near future.  Cant imagine it would be an extremely difficult feature to add.  As long as one had the files, it would be an easy, but extremely cool feature to add to MAMEwah.  Just wondering if the files you mentioned could be made available?  It would also be cool if you mentioned how to use those animated screens as a screensaver to display various attract modes of games in a random, rotation manner.
Thanks.

[lildivaaa]

lildivaaa,

I would really like to have those avi's or gifs "attraction mode" action screens.  Is it possible to make them available for download somewhere as one zipfile?It would be great to be able to use them in the future in MAMEwah instead of screenshots.  I also have the cabinet skin that you mentioned and the animated screens would look awesome compared to the still shots that I currently use.  Let's hope Minwah can add this to MAMEwah in the real near future.  Cant imagine it would be an extremely difficult feature to add.  As long as one had the files, it would be an easy, but extremely cool feature to add to MAMEwah.  Just wondering if the files you mentioned could be made available?  It would also be cool if you mentioned how to use those animated screens as a screensaver to display various attract modes of games in a random, rotation manner.
Thanks.

I Really don' t have any space on the web (yet!) to post these, but hopefully I can post them later this month. I will keep you informed.  

[)p(]

lildivaaa,

I would really like to have those avi's or gifs "attraction mode" action screens.  Is it possible to make them available for download somewhere as one zipfile?It would be great to be able to use them in the future in MAMEwah instead of screenshots.  I also have the cabinet skin that you mentioned and the animated screens would look awesome compared to the still shots that I currently use.  Let's hope Minwah can add this to MAMEwah in the real near future.  Cant imagine it would be an extremely difficult feature to add.  As long as one had the files, it would be an easy, but extremely cool feature to add to MAMEwah.  Just wondering if the files you mentioned could be made available?  It would also be cool if you mentioned how to use those animated screens as a screensaver to display various attract modes of games in a random, rotation manner.
Thanks.

I Really don' t have any space on the web (yet!) to post these, but hopefully I can post them later this month. I will keep you informed.  

how many are there and how big in total?
we have an avi archive of about 100 sofar for 3darcade and would love to add more to them...

peter

[Minwah]

Actually, I already have an entire collection of very small avi's of "attraction modes" for alot of the games. They could be offered as a single download as a zip file. Also, I can convert them to animated gifs easily, which would reduce the file size even more. Again, those gifs could all be in one zip file.

You know, I never bothered to look. Does MAMEWAH support gifs as screenshots? If so, I may test an animated gif and see if it will play natively as a screenshot.

Sounds great, I never thought anyone would have such a collection  

GIF's are supported, although I have a feeling animated GIFs will not animate.  Give it a try and let me know...

[)p(]

Sounds great, I never thought anyone would have such a collection  

the collection of avi's for 3darcade (also work with dk :-) ) were put on kazaa and torrent a while back... see
http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=8235;start=msg75010#msg75010

peter

[ntjedi]

I was just thinking that it would be cool to add an option that would allow you to show a picture of the controls for the game.  

For example if I press the 'c' key (or button) it then pops up a graphic of the orginal contoller (in a jpeg or gif?) or your own customized picture with the layout of the controllers?

What do you think?

[papaschtroumpf]

Well, you can sort of do that already, although not having it pop up.
You can design a layout with an extra piece of art (like Artwork #4) in mamewah layout designed and then you need to generate the pictures for all your games (Yikes!).
I'm starting to work on something like that except that the pictures show my own control panel and what buttons do what it in each game.
It's a major project to generate all those images though so I'm just doing it for my favorites right now.

[ntjedi]

Yeah, but I didnt want to clutter my frontend with too much stuff on the screen all at once so being able to pick a game and then hit a button to bring it up would be neat.

I guess I thought it would just make everything all nice and neat and if you wanted to see the picture you could.

[Minwah]

I was just thinking that it would be cool to add an option that would allow you to show a picture of the controls for the game.  

For example if I press the 'c' key (or button) it then pops up a graphic of the orginal contoller (in a jpeg or gif?) or your own customized picture with the layout of the controllers?

What do you think?

Good idea, but I don't want to do any like this until controls.dat is complete - this will be great...

I personally have given very little help with the project so far  , and I'm not sure of it's current status  but if anyone has any time I'm sure SirP / HC could use some extra hands...

[ntjedi]

Good idea, but I don't want to do any like this until controls.dat is complete - this will be great...

I personally have given very little help with the project so far  , and I'm not sure of it's current status  but if anyone has any time I'm sure SirP / HC could use some extra hands...

edited... never mind found the website.  Looks like SirP released it today!

[ntjedi]

I guess this is the site...


Edit by SirP:  NOT YET!!!!  Just working out the forum code for the announcement

[SirPoonga]

No no no no no no no!
I'm just getting the announcement ready on my forum.  Putting final touches on the project.  Will probably post something tonight now

[Minwah]

edited... never mind found the website.  Looks like SirP released it today!

Awesome, I'll check it out  

[ntjedi]

No no no no no no no!
I'm just getting the announcement ready on my forum.  Putting final touches on the project.  Will probably post something tonight now

Oops   sorry, didnt mean to jump the gun on you!  

In my experience no one ever listens to me (and I dont expect them to start now) so I wouldnt worry too much!  

[SirPoonga]

It's one of those luck things.  I didn't figure anyone else would step into the forum yesterday.  The last 3 months onyl a couple of people visit regularly.  Me, HowardC, uRebel, and cdbrown.  The devs and beta testers.

You just happen to come across it the day I was working on forum code for the announcement.

I didn't realize the forum comes up as the first search item on google and yahoo.  I noticed you must have used yahoo to find the site.

[ntjedi]

Yep, I did a yahoo search.  I was looking to find out if you needed any help (or I could be of any assistance).  

As I see, my timing is impeccable.

[SirPoonga]

Well, just go and add games to the system

Ok, done hijacking the thread

[Bill_S]

Minwah,
Now that I've submitted a couple games to the controls.dat project (more coming   ) I can truly see the power of this thing.

It would be really great if a developer (yourself for example) were to code a "control panel layout designer" that would allow the user to place controls representing their actual controls (color, and everything) on a canvas and tie them to MAME controls.  The designer could come with a canned set of controls, maybe as jpg's or something.  The user could add their own custom ones, too.  That way it would truly represent what was there.

Then, when someone walks up and starts a game, MAMEWAH brings up a cue card highlighting which buttons on that specific control panel are which actual controls from the arcade.

I think that would be the best thing since sliced bread
Seriously, almost every single person that walks up to my arcade machine starts a game and says something like "ok, which button is jump"

Oh yeah, I'll plug the controls.dat project, too.  Everyone - GO CONTRIBUTE.  It's pretty easy to do.  If you feel intimidated (I did), do an easy one that doesn't have many controls to start with (like donkey kong jr. or donkey kong 3   )  Then you'll see how easy it really is to do.

[creatine28]

Minwah,

Didn't see anything about this, but I was thinking of a feature that would be pretty cool for MameWah.  Since we're kinda stuck using multi version of mame now since some of the games have been removed, I thought it would be cool to be able to associate a specific game with a specific mame version or build. For instance, I use Fast mame or some games, Nonamemame for other games and a special build for Donkey Kong, in order to have the newly added sound fix.  Would it be hard to add this option?


Thanks,

Steve

[Minwah]

It would be really great if a developer (yourself for example) were to code a "control panel layout designer" that would allow the user to place controls representing their actual controls (color, and everything) on a canvas and tie them to MAME controls.  The designer could come with a canned set of controls, maybe as jpg's or something.  The user could add their own custom ones, too.  That way it would truly represent what was there.

Well I believe Howard has made a viewer which should do all these kindof things...I'm yet to see it but I believe it uses Frosty's awesome artwork for controls, so it should be superb

[Minwah]

Didn't see anything about this, but I was thinking of a feature that would be pretty cool for MameWah.  Since we're kinda stuck using multi version of mame now since some of the games have been removed, I thought it would be cool to be able to associate a specific game with a specific mame version or build. For instance, I use Fast mame or some games, Nonamemame for other games and a special build for Donkey Kong, in order to have the newly added sound fix.  Would it be hard to add this option?

This kindof links in with the 'one list with as many emulators as you want' idea.  The way I would really like to do this is not easily possible the way everything currently works.  I'm afraid it will be a while before I'm able to work on this

BUT I expect the same result may be achievable using a batch file, as long as there are not too many games you want to launch with alternative emulators - give it a thought